Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Maybe Scooby Doo Can Unmask ‘Jezebel Spirit’

Harvard recently recognized the Harvard College Munch, a student group whose goal is to “promote a positive and accurate understanding of alternative sexualities and kink on campus, as well as to create a space where college-age adults may reach out to their peers and feel accepted in their own sexuality.” And the wingnuts are beside themselves about it. This cracked me up:

Kinky sex is the realm of the Jezebel spirit, which sanctions sexual immorality (Rev. 2:20). Jezebel is the seducer that entices people to engage in all manner of sexual immorality, from teenage fornication to full-fledged kink. It’s a widespread demonic influence in our society—and a demonic influence that has invaded the church. To be sure, Jezebel is behind the fall of celebrated generals who ended their career with scandals and celebrated pastors who stepped down from the pulpit with shame.

Harvard’s official line is that, it “does not endorse the views or activities of any independent student organization.” But giving kinky sex activists a space on campus, making it possible for them to apply for grants to fund the promotion of their perversions, and allowing the group to market itself around the institution legitimizes sexual immorality. Harvard has effectively given a nod to Jezebel…

Many Harvard students may otherwise never be exposed to kink, but the spirit of Jezebel will take any opportunity it can to seduce anyone into the bondage of sexual immorality. I pray that university-approved kink sex club does not lead curious students into natural and spiritual bondage but the stark reality is that no good can come from this group—but plenty of Harvard-approved evil is now crouching at dorm room doors.

Devi Nair, vice president of the Harvard Republicans Club, put it this way in a Harvard Crimson article about the club: “Allowing for such a group tacitly ignores the fact that … modern society still promotes certain boundaries. Allowing for a kinky sex group will only foster similar, if not more extreme clubs within our community.”

Yeah, Republicans like their kinky sex to be behind closed doors, with someone other than their wife. Or with a gay prostitute. Or a Rentboy. But always in secret, so no one finds out that all that talk about morality and family values is just a marketing campaign.

Devi Nair, vice president of the Harvard Republicans Club, put it this way in a Harvard Crimson article about the club: “Allowing for such a group tacitly ignores the fact that … modern society still promotes certain boundaries. Allowing for a kinky sex group will only foster similar, if not more extreme clubs within our community.”

I’ve seen some recent hypotheses that suggest Jezebel may not even have been how she was portrayed in the Bible. Some Biblical writers may have exaggerated or even made up things about her because she was a pagan. Imagine that.

I’m disgusted that a cerebral institution like Harvard are allowing a student group to promote an immoral lifestyle, lending apparent legitimacy, via their good name, to the depraved idea that it’s acceptable to be a college Republican.

You know, a kink is simply a sexual practice that is out of the ordinary. If you really enjoy watching Ren and Stimpy cartoons during sex, that’s a kink. According to Dan Savage (and I believe it), things like spanking and restraints are so common these days that they don’t even qualify anymore. Oral sex was once a kink, amazingly, but now I doubt even the Jezebel-fearers would waste a single breath condemning it.

So what they’re really saying is,

We believe in the status quo. It’s so important to us to be “normal” that we think anything else is sinful, immoral, and leads to the corruption of youth. Change and novelty are our fundamental enemies– we fear them so much that we ascribe their existence to a demonic realm.

His marriage and political career fell apart after he asked Jeri Ryan to perform oral sex on him in a Paris nightclub. He deliberately took her to Europe so that he could get away with it unknown. Ryan wasn’t in on it, and vehemently objected when he asked her, and she went public with it.

Charisma News seems to be having some server problems. I wonder if FTB wanged them.

I don’t recall if it was on that site, but I did comment on a story about the club on a Catholic news site. There was some rampant strawmanning going on there. When I pointed out that they were making a ton of unfounded assumptions about the club’s activities and members, a defensive bafflegab storm started.

Interesting bit of projection. Which organization pressures students to conform to a code of conduct that as strict as it is arbitrary? Which organization demands young people shackle their natural predilections and hide in shame? Which organization manipulates those feelings of shame, building devotion through the cathartic journey and promises of absolution?

Okay, so that’s both of them. But at least with a kink club the chains come off at some point.

Kink is the result of a sex drive and intellectual curiosity. Sort of explains why conservatives don’t like it

And sex being fun, completely apart from the whole baby-making aspect. A kink club means that young, unmarried people are having sex in the first place, which conservatives already don’t like, and furthermore it means they’re having sex for the sake of it. Holy cats! They might have so much fun that they don’t ever decide to get hitched, settle down, and make a family! And what will the world come to then?

left0ver1under @12: Slight correction–Jeri Ryan didn’t ‘go public’ with the sex-club story. Rather, it was contained in the court records from their divorce, which had originally been sealed. Reporters, noting that this was highly unusual, opted to push to have them opened. Jack Ryan then doubled-down on the gutlessness, claiming that the records were sealed because of information pertaining to his autistic son. This bought him some sympathy, even from openly partisan reporters–until the press won the case, the court records were unsealed, and his fetishes were brought out into the sunlight.

BTW, Ryan was already losing against Obama; what the unsealing did wasn’t so much give Obama the election as let him phone it in. The Illinois GOP, sensing an impossible task, brought in Alan Keyes to run against Barack rather than actually put someone who might still have a viable political career. Obama demolished Keyes in a debate that was so one-sided it was painful; Obama spent much of the rest of the campaign traveling to other states and pressing for other Democratic candidates–something which no doubt played a large role in getting him his success in the Democratic presidential primary a couple years later.

If there was a conspiracy to put Obama in power, it was a conspiracy of his enemies.

The best part of all of this is that Jezebel was not some wanton slut. She just went along with allowing the open worship of Baal. When her sons succeeded Ahab, Elisha incited a mob that killed all three of them and threw her body outside the wall of the city to be eaten by dogs. That’s it. She was just on the losing side of a political battle back when such things were real battles. You know, the good old days.

Yes, a tradition grew up that she was this evil seductress but that is not was the Bible actually says about her.

It never ceases to amaze me how little these people know about their own damned holy book.

Fetishes, by definition, involve objects or nongenital parts of the body. Sex in public is more of a kink, and not a terribly interesting or unusual one. I’m surprised that someone would even bother to include a request for it in divorce proceedings.

The religious guy’s quote is inaccurate. Shocking I know – more of a question of in how many ways. In one particularly way – they aren’t getting a dungeon and taking turns with the mistress outfit. Rather they are having a meet & greet for folks who may be interested in the topic. It’s a talking shop. Similar informal general public normal clothes in public meet ups aren’t exactly uncommon.

Many Harvard students may otherwise never be exposed to kink, but the spirit of Jezebel will take any opportunity it can to seduce anyone into the bondage of sexual immorality. I pray that university-approved kink sex club does not lead curious students into natural and spiritual bondage

I always had a soft spot for Jezebel. She was a Tyrian (Phoenician) princess, so she would have been coming from the most cosmopolitan city of the world to this backwater of Jerusalem — probably as part of a trade deal. Her husband was a spineless wimp who always seemed to agree with the last person he talked to. All she wanted was a little religious tolerance so she could worship the gods of her homeland — but no, she got followed around everywhere by these wild-eyed prophets denouncing her as the spawn of Satan. Gee, they talk constantly about how she’s a wanton harlot who should be eaten by dogs, and yet for some reason she doesn’t decide to convert to their religion — wonder how come?

How is it that in these people’s twisted minds, sexual immorality is personified as a woman.

Because if it were personified as a man, either 1) it would imply that men are responsible for fornication and rape and not the slutty sluts who tempted them or 2) it would make them equate sex with hot sweaty man-flesh.

The best part of all of this is that Jezebel was not some wanton slut.

You’re talking about while she was alive. After her death, teenage Israelite boys discovered that they could say her name three times in the bathroom and poof! She’d appear in a striped sweater and hockey mask and do dirty, dirty things to them in order to get revenge on the townspeople who set her on fire.

Busterggi wrote: “Oh man, Lilith is going to be pissed when she hears this!”

I expect Salomé might have been somewhat affronted as well. I always thought she was the notorious seductress of Biblical annals. Wikipedia says of her: “Christian traditions depict her as an icon of dangerous female seductiveness, notably in regard to the dance mentioned in the New Testament, which is thought to have had an erotic element to it…”

I’d have thought the wingnuts would have been on board with this one. After all, in these terribly godless modern times, kinky sex is the only sphere where the time-honored Biblically-sanctioned institutions of slavery and corporal punishment are given the respect they deserve.

@ Ichthyic: It’s not incorrect. That’s the dictionary definition of fetish. For matters of practical everyday use, though, it probably doesn’t matter much. I suspect the only people on my side would be professional editors who are also dedicated amateur perverts. So … most of the editors I know, I guess.

Paraphilia, as a term, has one big advantage and one big disadvantage. In both cases, it’s that very few people will have any idea what the fuck you’re talking about.

“Uh … the desire to fuck paraplegics?”

@ martinc: The BDSM community, as a community, doesn’t practice slavery the way the wingnuts demand. For one thing, they let women boss around men. That’s enough to make a lot of their heads explode.